Archive for the ‘Europe’ Category

I just booked a weekend trip to Tallinn, Estonia on 6th September! We’ll be staying here. There’s a great Russian restaurant where we ate last time, we are trying to get a table there again. And last time there (spring 2007) we got engaged at the same trip. I love the medieval, romantic atmosphere of the city’s old town. You could say I like Tallinn quite much.

After Estonia joined the EU it’s not such a cheap place anymore though. In the late 90’s you could go there and buy stuff without spending almost anything. I even bought a black hair extension when I visited Tallinn in 1999. Yes, those were the glorious gothic days of my youth… I still have it buried somewhere with the fake fangs and black velvet dresses and my black teenage angst.

Nowadays you can get there from Helsinki in 2,5 hours by an express boat so it really isn’t far away. Compared to the 3,5 hours drive to Pori which is in the same country… I’ve always envied the people living in Central Europe because they might drive in 30 minutes to work in another country where they live if they like. When I was studying in Maastricht in 2004 for 5 months we had 8 kilometers to Belgium and some 20 kilometers to Germany. I had a friend who was also an exchange student there only that she normally lived 40 kilometers away in Belgium and returned home every weekend. Finland feels so isolated from the rest of the Europe and central europians see this place like some mystic, soviet-like rural place where polar bears wander on the desolate glaciers with wind howling and temperature -60C. One Dutch class mate even asked me if we have Mars-bars here and other if we have penguins. Seriously.

Since the dream of a baby hasn’t come true so far, I’ve figured out that I can do all the other stuff I love doing and couldn’t do so easily with a child. Like travel as much as I can afford, take on new hobbies and projects. I don’t want the infertility to define who I am. I’m much more than a woman without a baby. Wouldn’t hurt to get one though.